Sorry that I have failed to live up to your expectations.
Sorry that despite your efforts in molding me and scolding me and guiding me and deriding me, the projection of your energies have been in vain.
Sorry that at the age of 24, going on 25, I have yet to attain what you seek of me.
I won’t pretend to be the dream you sought when you made me in an act of love. I am not a personification of perfection. I am not a divine creation. I am not Galatea. And you are not Pygmalion.*
I am not a building you can tear down and rebuild from scratch. I am not an immaculate statue given life. I am here; I have been born, and I have been made. Now it is time for me to make myself.
In the process of that remaking, I may be scratched and scarred; knocked down and showed up; played out and pushed in. I may thrive or fail. I may find an easy path. Or learn the hard way.
What can I say? I was not born complete. I was born of flesh and blood and intention. Or perhaps inattention. Perhaps an accident. Either way, I was born of you.
I came forth with your flaws, and to make things more interesting, I brought my own.
I am a wanderer finding my way.
I am a dreamer finding my dream.
I am flawed despite your efforts.
I am a work in progress, and I do not know when the work will be done.
Perhaps it never will.
*Galatea was an ivory statue made by the sculptor Pygmalion, and given life through his prayer to the gods. He built her as an ideal woman, one who would rise above all others – a paragon of perfection. In many ways, that is how we make children. We create them in an act of love and believe with all our hearts that they are just as we dreamt. But even dreams take time to come true. And sometimes they never do.
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As you said, a mom's hopes and dreams is transferred down to their children. But somehow, they tend to be harsher on their daughters... explains the angst that women go through with their mothers.
ReplyDeleteIt's horribly confusing sometimes because you want to be on own person and yet, there's this inner desire for your mother's approval... is our umbilical cord of another form still attached somehow?
Oh, I was guessing that this seems like something moms would do, so in case it isn't so, sorry wtf.
Eh, don't beat yourself up, or feel sad that the molds that has been set for you does not fit. You're right... we're all WIPs. Heck, we'd probably see that with our parents! It's always a kick for me and my bro to see my grandma reprimanding my mom and she'd be all sullen like a teenager. Funny stuff =D
I think the best we could do is be a better person than we were yesterday. That's what matters.
As for expectations, I loved what the poet Kahlil Gibran had to say about it:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
actually it's not my mom.
ReplyDeletemy mom rocks.
and thank you. i think your words say enough; i couldn't respond with anything wiser or more appropriate.
Gibran has something for every situation... :)
also: COMMENTS! and i thought this blog was deader than a zombie apocalypse town. (at least those towns have zombies.)